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The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden; the upcoming U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing; UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s visit to Myanmar; and Liberation Day in Vietnam.

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The highlights:

Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. He is not missed, though the terrorist movement he led lives on in diminished form in places such as Yemen and the Sahel.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are heading the U.S. delegation that will be visiting Beijing for the fourth round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. China announced ahead of the talks that it has taken steps to expand the trading band for its currency, variously known as the yuan and renminbi (RMB). Washington has long pressured China to let the RMB appreciate, an act that would make U.S. products cheaper (hence more competitive) in China and Chinese products more expensive (hence less competitive) in the United States and elsewhere. Chinese officials have long realized that letting the RMB appreciate is critical to shifting away from export-led growth to (domestic) consumption-led growth. The problem, of course, is getting from here to there—China’s export sector opposes letting the RMB appreciate. China may be a one-party country, but it still has interest groups politics.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon travels to Myanmar (Burma) for the third time since 2008. His first two visits didn’t go well. Myanmar’s ruling junta barred him from meeting with Myanmar’s Nobel-prize winning opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, although in the wake of his visit it did allow some humanitarian relief workers to enter the country. His 2009 visit didn’t yield even that. He left the country saying that he expected the government “to demonstrate real progress in the near future.” Three years later, change has begun to come to Myanmar, though not because of Ban’s efforts. New Myanmar leader Thein Sein says that government reform in Burma is like traversing a road “so narrow that you cannot turn back.” Ban will meet with Thein Sein and Aung Sang Suu Kyi. He will likely applaud Myanmar’s reforms and bang the drum of optimism for the country’s future. One of Ban’s advisers recently said that Myanmar could soon become another “Asian Tiger.”